


Cost: On place, CB 1 to Cheat Death

by mauso_linum



Category: Cardfight!! Vanguard
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everyone Needs Therapy, Everyone cheats death in vanguard, Gen, Temporary Character Death, except you Miguel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:42:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27657011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mauso_linum/pseuds/mauso_linum
Summary: Saving the world isn’t fun, not when your success rate is actually only 99.9%. You can try and move on, live a normal life, but the this needy and demanding world doesn’t give a shit about you or your needs.(AU where Ibuki disappears after the events of Stride Gate and everyone presumes he’s dead. He comes back just as Gyze and his Apostles arrive, and Chrono doesn’t know what to make of death anymore)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	1. Stride 1: Summer

**Author's Note:**

> AU where Ibuki disappears after the events of Stride Gate and everyone presumes he’s dead, when in reality, he’s at Cray. He comes back just as Gyze and his Apostles arrive, and Chrono doesn’t know what to make of death anymore. There’s only so much you can think and believe in when the people you (want to) hold close just can’t seem to take death seriously. And there’s only so much unwavering faith you can put in someone.

Iwakura’s death came as a surpise to all of them.

The funeral had been on a weekend, a quiet little ceremony out of town. Huddled amongst the grieving attendees, the three of them fiddled silently with their small bouquets. Chrono snuck a tiny glance to the right, unable to focus on anything the emcee was saying. Stiff as a pole, Shion stared ahead at the podium at the sniffling woman, seeming unperturbed by the puffy redness of his eyes. Nothing belied the fact that he had just lost the closest thing to a guardian since young. Etiquette and rules hammered into Shion since young steeled his spine and pulled him straight, like a staunch knight braving the loss of his kinsman; the Kibas had always paid their respect with dry eyes and firm strides. The hands that never shook gripped the bouquet defiantly as Chrono fought the urge to pat his friend’s stiff shoulders and just tell him to  relax.  The voice droned on, a faint eulogy that faded even further into the background as Chrono’s mind wandered further. 

Did all 16 year olds grieve like Shion Kiba did, or would they cry and sob openly without shame or restraint? How should one grieve? A soft breeze blew ribbons of sunlight through the windows and the misty curtain of dust particles fogged up the room. Through the shimmering haze, the portrait of Mr. Iwakura shuddered gently into another familiar face. Chrono blinked away the spots in his vision, but Mr Iwakura had returned, smiling genially out of the framed photo. The small body of Ms. Iwakura sank beneath the podium in tears as another soft gale parted the golden haze of setting sun. The bells rang and all of a sudden, the ceremony was over. 

* * *

Two years had passed, seven hundred and thirty days of flipping the calendar as he dashed out to school. Nothing much had changed: Mikuru was still working on her business and his dad was still very much absent from his life, but the world had tilted on its axis and there was no going back. After the funeral, Tokoha had hastily left for Paris.

“Sorry guys, i would love to spend more time with you but my break is almost over.” She hugged them goodbye at the airport, squishing them against the massive bags of souvenirs she had bought.

Shion went on with school, still in his limousine driven by a chauffeur. Even at Fukuhara, school for the rich and the richer, that must’ve caused some sort of commotion. Although, Chrono swore, nothing could surpass the screaming from before; his ears still rang thinking about it. He had ran into them once after school, just as Shion was leaving a store that Chrono failed to recognise. He had smiled brightly and waved, though he couldn’t stay for long. 

“Oh hey Chrono. Just grabbing a quick bite before, well, before I start my new responsibilities. See you around soon.” In the side mirror of the limo, the well-groomed dark hair of the new butler shone with the grease of a well-waxed shoe. 

High school was kinder, if only slightly, with the less than savory rumors of him dying down considerably, but he could still count the number of friends he made on one hand and still have enough left to count his grades. Card Capital 2 was still the same and Trinity Dragons were still together, cheering each other on as they mentored the younger players. As usual, Chrono fiddled with the ties of the apron, battling an uncooperative bow. Everything was the same, yet everyone has changed; it seems that pieces had begun to fall in place, pinned down by the realities of growing older. Two summers ago, Tsuneto had been laughing about his name, and now he laughs as a new kid crows about his silly haircut, though the Chrono-Chrono jokes still came back with a vengeance sometimes. Two summers ago, Chrono handed in a two-word essay with shitty handwriting to boot, and now he’s handing in two-pages of essay with slightly better handwriting. He fought back a groan as he realises belatedly that his history essay was due soon. 

Two summers ago, he had been alone. 

Two summers later, he still alone, but no longer lonely. 

A familiar ding rushed him back to his duties as the glass doors swung open. Chrono hastily bolted up from where he was crouched under the counter in an attempt to dislodge Assiticat from an empty box. 

“Welcome to Card Capital 2. How may I—“

A dream, a vision, call it what it was for it had no name. Chrono felt the blood rush to his head, a headache whipping itself up like a storm as a flash of platinum hair drifted by. Under the sunlight flitering through the glass doors and windows in thin rays, a delicate drapery wove itself over the quiet shop and its inhabitants. The sky seemed to heave a thin breath into the shop, catching the platinum strands in a leisurely dance.Through a familiar haze of gauzy dust, Chrono blinked again, and the curtains withdrew itself once more. The gale around his ears died down.

Two summers had already passed. 

White. A dusty white, leaning towards cream. Definitely not silver, and obviously not platinum. Chrono coughed awkwardly, stifling a strange itch in his throat. The newcomer hadn’t seemed to notice his weird episode, staring vacantly into space. He took a deep breath and tried again.

“Hey there, are you new here?”

The newcomer turns and smiles at him with what Chrono could only describe as a loopy grin. Unsettling, but it was not like he had the best smile himself either. Even Kumi had to fight back laughter the last time they tried to teach him how to appear less intimidating. As he ducked under the counter to join the new-comer at a table, Assisticat leapt up from his makeshift nest and pawed at the digital clock on the counter. It swayed a couple of times before it fell, and Chrono had to leap across the store to save it from a terrible death on impact. He sighed in relief; at least now no one had to explain to Misaki why the new digital display was broken. It chirped back at him as the culprit innocuously settled down for another nap.

“What a cute cat this store has. Is it the manager?”

The new customer chuckled and Chrono suppressed his judgement to turn and smile back. Unfortunately, he found himself staring right into the bemused eyes of the other, curved like a sickle gathering the edges of the eyes into folds. Too close, he was much too close. Amber, his teacher droned on in the back of his head,a fossilised tree resin capable of preserving DNA by trapping organisms; yellow amber oozing out of the man’s crescent moon eyes like an apparatus brimming with spirits.

Brimming with spirits that burnt, Onimaru Kazumi left his name as he glided out of the store. Shaking, Chrono gasped for breath as the scalding chains of their fight sizzled in his brain. He felt it around his limbs, his throat, his mind, the touch of a phantom world caught in that man’s eyes. He does not answer Shin, even as he called out for him in concern. The sun had disappeared beneath the horizon, sapping the few glimmers of daylight left. As Shin called out for him another time, Chrono slowly unfurled his clenched fist, trying to will the burning sensation out of his mind. A dull ache throbbed in his hand and he looked down instinctively.

The crescent shaped indents scattered across his palm twinkled back at him.


	2. Stride 2: Of Gangs and Termites

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place the day after ep 11 of G Next. This is a filler chapter and i promise Ibuki will show up soon, as soon as I manage to wrangle a voice out of him

The moon was high in the sky when they finally managed to walk home, tired but unscathed, spare Chrono’s few scrapes. Taiyou had spent a while fussing over them, worming around him and Kazuma, spouting something about infections and hospitals. Chrono paid his pleas to go get checked no mind, even if his little foot stomps were cute, there was little chance he’d ever step back into another hospital again. Those places were just below dentists in his arson list, with its intense smell of disinfectent and abundance of nothing but sterile white, white white.

White. The pain of having nothing to look at, but an odd space where absence seemed to grow. Parasites were white, the squirming ivory of termites that he dug out of the soil in the orphanage when no one had wanted to play with him, not after he had gotten into a scuffle with a few older bullies. He remembered the clipboard of a tall lady in heels, so tall he couldn’t see her face. He remembered her voice.

Four bruises

Three scrapped knees

Two swollen knuckles

A blunt prod at his bruised cheek drew his attention back to his friends; he suppose Kazuma would have no choice but to call him that with the whole gang showdown that had happened. Internally, he scoffed. Territories and gangs built upon a card game seemed ridiculous even to him. At least Ryuzu had a decent reason to start a semi-illegal (he assumed; so far no lawyer had approached with a lawsuit for the toddler) organisation based around Vanguard, no matter how off-kilter he got at the very end. His strength came from his desire for peace, but these underground fighter fought for chaos and personal gain, none of which rallied any true strength to them. Time had chipped away at the petulant pang to admit that Ryuzu had been strong, stronger than almost anyone he’d fought before at that time, made tougher by his unwavering conviction to make the world better. He might not have known Kazuma for long, at which anyone else would have written the boy off as a frigid sore-loser, but his eyes had told Chrono of a different story.

“What would you have done if I’d lost that fight?”

Chrono barely caught onto the end of the muttered question, as Taiyou jabbed a second time at his battered cheek. The moon hung between them, dusting the concrete sidewalk with a smattering of light. Kazuma had hung back, distancing himself from the duo. Interwoven with the haggard fluorescent of the streetlamp, the moonbeams drained his eyes of any confidence he held during the last few turns of the battle, casted a pale shadow across the hollows of his cheeks. Taiyou snuck a glance at Chrono and quietly held his tongue with a tiny smile.

“Nothing. You would never have lost to those guys.”

Somewhere down the street, a church bell tolled a hallowed chime, its echoes muffled by the moonlight.

“I told you. You’d win.”

And the passing cloud covered the moon, plunging them into the silence of the night.

* * *

“You did what?”

Appeasing Kamui the next day ended up being even more difficult than Chrono had envisioned. He had managed to dodge the Mikuru-sized bullet by pleading with the police, but pulling wool over Kamui’s eyes was another story. His connections with the Association had given him enough information to piece together the story. There was no way he could lie to his mentor’s face with all that evidence at hand, so they lied up together in Card Capital 2 to face the music.

“I cannot believe you guys. C’mon, underground gangs? Does this just happen to  _ every _ team?”

“It was alright, Kamui. Kazuma won, we’re all fine.” 

Just to be extra convincing, Chrono looped his arms around Taiyou andKazuma’s necks and pulled them close for a wide grin.

“See?”

“What if they threw you into the grinder huh? Thank god Taiyou had some common sense.”

Chrono threw up his hands in defeat and released his disgruntled teammates. Well, teammate since Taiyou got a good laugh out of Kazuma’s irritation. Kamui sighed and waved them off to their own devices. As they shuffled off to a table, Chrono struggled with the small pang of guilt in his heart. It wasn’t like him to cause others to worry, or rather, he tried not to be the one to cause worry. Growing up, there were always other things to be worried about other than  him;  the orphanage director and his terrible back, Mikuru and her work. There was no space for another worry, another thing to fuss over, when calendars were already so packed and brows so furrowed that they formed a deep canyon. There was no need to add on to those hurried days, so he was determined to stand strong alone, a conviction had not changed since the day he saw his aunt weeping in her room, hunched over a stack of papers. (He found out later that those were not bills, as he assumed, but old family photos). Instead, he had poured his energy into worrying for others, allowing them to lean on his shoulder; the old director had relied on him to ferry his medication, Mikuru always came home to clean floors and warm laundry. Chrono was a child who sped run growing up, his steady hands at odds with his tubby adolescent features, seemingly holding up the whole world in his tiny, cupped palms— a dandelion world that dissolved in the slightest breeze. 

In front of him, Shin peeled an old advertisement off the wall (Ultra Rare Final Tour: Final Destination!!) revealing the unblemished cream paint underneath. Beside the clean but still obviously worn wall, the rectangular spot squirmed under the fluorescent ceiling lights like a uncovered earthworm under the blazing sun. Except, earthworms were not white, they were either brown or red or orange, but always warm with the touch of the living ground. Termites were white, as Chrono remembered, and besides being gross and squirmy, were cold with the pallor of death. Perhaps it was the dead wood that they consumed seeping from their tiny stomaches onto his palms, the absence felt in their whiteness dominated his presence whenever he wandered off alone, having scared off too many children to successfully find a playmate.

Chrono’s thoughts wandered back to the hospital, and the tall lady with even taller heels. He had been afraid of her then, the point of her shiny shoes shone authority and that to a 6 year old, meant threat. The all-white of her uniform only served to heighten her position in his eyes, a threatening angel starched and stiffened in place. Looking back, the only thing she ever done to him during her visits were to checkup on his physical health, and the only pain she brought with her was when she cleaned up her scraps and cuts. Such a nice and understanding child, she’d croon to him, but one day, when Chrono chanced upon the adjacent door of the director’s office, he’d heard something else.

What a lonely child, she’d said, a bright but lonely child.

Now, Chrono wouldn’t exactly agree that he was ever a ‘bright’ child, but he had been lonely. It was lonely in the orphanage, when he struggled to make friends, when he fought with others, when he walked the gardens alone; it was lonely. From the lone termite that trawled up his finger one day to the lady’s well-ironed uniform, he’d come to associate white with loneliness, blandness,  _nothingness_.  Even for the man with a full head of white at the young (Miwa had insisted),ripe age of twenty, Chrono smelt the familiar scent of loneliness from him. It was not a putrid stench, nor was it a noticeable odor, but when the winds blew the scent drew itself out to dance in the breeze. Unlike in the orphanage or at school, it did not cluster about itself to form a heavy fog, but instead dispersed with the passing wind, like dandelion seeds seeking refuge elsewhere far away. 

Sometimes, he wonders if that what Ibuki did, if he too sought refuge from something far, far away. He wonders a lot, as Tokoha puts it bluntly, about useless things that will never happen. And it never would, for he would not get his answers now.

Something brushed against his fingertips and Chrono grasped onto it by instinct. He looked down and saw a sushi shop voucher. He looked back up quizzically at Kamui, who had shoved it into his hands.

“I got this from a friend, but I can’t make it for the time slot. You can go instead, hadn’t you said you wanted to try this store out before?”

Although the words seemed to slip causally from Kamui’s mouth, Chrono did not miss the odd glimmer of worry in his mentor’s eyes. He thanked Kamui and placed the voucher in his pocket, turning away to continue with his shop duties.

Food might be a good distraction for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As mentioned earlier, this is kind of a filler chapter to introduce where Team Strider stand in the AU but it went off the rails into something else so I guess Kazuma’s extended screen time will have to wait for a while sigh. Its honestly not ideal, but I’m too worn out from finals to beta, and my tenses are just doing time leaps.
> 
> Do leave a comment below and let me know what you think! ehe

**Author's Note:**

> This is mainly a spur of the moment idea that I had and I haven’t really figured out how this will go. My finals are here, plus this is kind of a de-stress piece so updates will be slow. Unfortunately, I haven’t come up with a concrete idea for why the hell Ibuki got dragged to Cray after SG, so suggestions would really help me out here. Pairings are undecided as well; i have no idea how to craft a believable romance that wouldn’t end in a divorce.
> 
> I would love it if reviews/comments/suggestions are made! <3


End file.
